


Unthought Known

by noiproksa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Banter, Canon Compliant, Case Fic, Friendship, Gen, Hugs, Profound Bond, Self-Made Family, Soul Bond, Team Free Will, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2019-10-05 14:02:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17326364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noiproksa/pseuds/noiproksa
Summary: Dean wakes up in an abandoned mental institution with no memories and two strange guys, ‘Sam’ and ‘Castiel.’ They have to work together if they want to find out who they are and what happened to them. And what the hell is this profound bond he seems to share with Castiel?*Dean woke up with a pounding headache on the floor of a bright white, windowless room and no recollection of how he got there. What the hell was he doing in what looked like some sort of psych ward?Before he could get his bearings, he heard moaning coming from behind him and got to his feet, swiveling around, ready to fight whoever was in the room with him.‘Whoever’ turned out to be two someones. One man with abnormally long hair and one guy in a trench coat who had a ‘tax accountant’ vibe to him. Who were these clowns?(Intended as gen, but can be read as Destiel pre-slash.)





	1. Chapter 1

Dean woke up with a pounding headache on the floor of a bright white, windowless room and no recollection of how he got there. What the hell was he doing in what looked like some sort of psych ward?

Before he could get his bearings, he heard moaning coming from behind him and got to his feet, swiveling around, ready to fight whoever was in the room with him. ‘Whoever’ turned out to be two someones. One man with abnormally long hair and one guy in a trench coat who had a ‘tax accountant’ vibe to him. Who were these clowns?

“What the hell?” Haircut asked, rubbing his temples.

The tax accountant (in a not very tax accountant-y fashion) immediately jumped to his feet and pulled a huge blade right out of his trench coat sleeve (who even stowed weapons there?!), holding it in front of himself and pointing it at Dean and Haircut respectively, eying them warily.

“Who are you?” Trench Coat demanded to know in a low deadpan.

Haircut held his hands out in front of him in a placating manner as he slowly rose to his feet as well, thus revealing that in addition to his abnormally long hair, he was also abnormally large. Dean sized him up, trying to figure out if he could take him in a fight.

“I’m Sam,” the giant said, his voice soft. “Could we maybe all put our weapons away?”

Only then did Dean realize that he had taken out a gun, an automatic reflex.

“I’m Dean,” he said, his gun still pointed at fake tax accountant guy, who seemed like the more immediate danger despite the fact that he was two heads shorter than the other man. “Who the hell are you?”

“Castiel,” the man replied.

“Castiel?” Dean repeated. “What kind of a name is that?!” He turned to the man who had introduced himself as ‘Sam’ and said, pointing at ‘Castiel,’ “Found the odd one out.”

Sam, however, did not seem amused by the joke and was eying Dean’s gun, his hands still held out in front of him. Grudgingly Dean lowered it, which in return made Castiel put his weapon away, too (back into the sleeve of his coat, for crying out loud. Seriously. Who did that?). He was still squinting at both him and Sam, though.

“Does anyone know where we are or how we got here?” Sam asked diplomatically, obviously more at ease now that the weapons were no longer out in the open.

Silence. Dean wracked his brain, but came up empty. Come to think of it, he actually drew a blank on pretty much everything apart from his own name.

“You don’t remember anything, either, do you?” Sam concluded. Neither Dean nor Castiel said anything to that. Taking the silence as confirmation, Sam said, “So, what _do_ we know?”

“You are human,” Castiel immediately stated.

“Wow, that’s… helpful.” Dean rolled his eyes. ‘Odd one out’ had actually been a pretty accurate description of Castiel.

“Okay,” Sam indulged him. “What else?”

“I can’t fly,” Castiel continued promptly.

“Would you stop stating the obvious?” Dean groused. When Castiel tilted his head at him, looking for all the world like a confused puppy, he explained, “I can’t shoot lasers out of my eyes. I can’t walk through walls… We could keep listing things we can’t do all day. That’s not what Sammy here was asking for.”

Sam shot him a dark look. “It’s ‘Sam,’” he corrected.

Castiel tilted his head even further to the side. “Why would you be able to shoot lasers out of your eyes? That is not an ability common to humans.”

“Why would you be able to fly?” Dean countered.

“I am an Angel of the Lord,” Castiel deadpanned. “My first instinct was to fly back to Heaven. I was surprised to find myself unable to do so.”

Wow. This guy was even more insane than originally thought. Dean looked at Sam over Castiel’s head and twirled his index finger in a circle motion around his ear. Sam did not seem to appreciate the gesture as he furrowed his brows and shook his head slightly.

Dean turned his attention back to Castiel. “So, Cas… Can I call you ‘Cas’?”

“No.”

“ _Cas_ ,” Dean repeated nevertheless, laying a hand on his shoulder and quickly taking it away again when Castiel scowled at it as if he was about to smite him.—Wait, _smite_? Where had that thought come from? Dean shook his head to clear his thoughts and continued, “Are you at all aware of the fact that angels don’t exist?”

It was pretty obvious at this point that this guy had a screw loose, but as to how far removed from reality he actually was, was still to be determined.

Before Cas could answer, however, Sam butted in. “Any theories as to what we’re doing here?”

“Obviously, at least one of us—” Dean inclined his head towards Cas in a jerking motion. “—is mental. Hence the mental institution. I am probably an orderly or something. A doctor, maybe.” Then he looked at Sam, trying and failing to figure him out, and eventually added, “Not sure about you, yet.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yes, you look _exactly_ like a doctor,” he said, pointedly looking at Dean’s clothes and making Dean glance down at his flannel shirt and jeans.

“It could be casual Friday, you don’t know,” he mumbled defiantly.

“I doubt ‘casual Friday’ exists for doctors in mental institutions.”

Cas’ face had fallen into a frown. “What is ‘casual Friday’?”

“Yeah, I bet they don’t exist in Heaven, either,” Dean teased the self-proclaimed ‘angel.’

Cas didn’t seem to get that Dean was just pulling his chain, though, and answered, sober, “They do not.”

“Could we focus, here?” Sam tried to get them back on track. “I doubt they let patients carry weapons. Plus, has no one noticed that it kind of looks like there was some sort of fight in here?” He motioned towards the corner where a desk has been tipped over, some papers and pens lying around on the floor. An abstract painting was hanging on the wall askew.

This just got weirder and weirder. “Yeah, I’m out,” Dean announced and walked towards the steel door. He pulled the handle, but the door remained shut. “Super.” He turned around to the two other men and said, pointing over his shoulder at the door, “Locked.”

“Any ideas?” Sam asked.

“I could try and open the door using my power of telekinesis,” Cas suggested.

“Cas, repeat after me,” Dean instructed, talking slowly as to not upset the mentally unstable man. “You are _not_ an angel. Angels don’t exist.”

“ _You_ are not an angel,” Cas repeated dutifully. “I, however, am.”

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. He began to doubt that he was working in this mental institution. Apparently, he didn’t really have a lot of patience when it came to crazy people and their illusions.

Cas didn’t seem to notice or care that he was getting on Dean’s nerves, however, because he simply continued, “Why do you keep calling me ‘Cas’? That is not my name.”

“It’s a shortened version of your name,” Dean explained and then stopped short and blinked because he had a strange sense of déjà vu. He shook his head and the next second, the thought in the back of his mind had vanished.

“It’s a pet name,” Sam added. “Humans use them as a sign of affection.”

“Don’t indulge him!” Dean said. “And that’s not why I call him that, I don’t even know the dude.” He had no idea how he had come up with the nickname so quickly, it had just felt right.

“As far as you know,” Sam pointed out.

Since Dean didn’t feel like musing over why he had given Cas a nickname that quickly, he decided a change of topic was in order. “So, for some reason someone locked us in here,” he recapped. “Probably the same someone who drugged us and made us forget our whole _lives_. Sound serial killer to anyone?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said, a thoughtful look on his face. “You have a _gun_.” He motioned over to Cas. “He has… some other sort of weapon.—Shouldn’t we have been able to defend ourselves?”

“It could have been demons,” Cas threw in.

Dean decided to simply ignore his insane ramblings and addressed Sam instead, “You don’t think this is the type of situation where the last one left alive gets to leave?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Now we know who really is the psychopath in this room.”

“I’m not saying we should play along,” Dean grumbled.

“If it was demons—” Cas started again and Dean had had about enough. He didn’t pay attention to what else Cas said and instead took a few steps back and then ran towards the door and threw himself against it with his shoulder, putting all his weight behind it.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled when he fell down, his shoulder throbbing in pain. He pressed his hand against his aching shoulder while scrambling to his feet and glaring at the door, which had not given an inch.

“Dammit!” he swore. That would leave a nice bruise.

“Here. Let me,” Cas said as he took a step closer to Dean and reached out to him, his hand touching Dean’s arm gently.

“Dude—” Dean began, ready to lecture him on the concept of personal space (because who went around groping complete strangers?) when all of a sudden, there was a strange warmth flowing through Dean’s arm to his shoulder and—was Cas’ hand on his arm _glowing_? A second later, there was no pain left, only a nice tingling.

“What the _hell_?” Dean asked, taking a step back and thus dislodging Cas’ hand from his arm.

“Oh my God!” Sam said. “Did you _see_ that?” He was looking from Cas to Dean and back. “You’re a real _angel_?—He’s an angel!”

“Gotta revise my theory,” Dean remarked. “Obviously, we’re all crazy. Or maybe we’re hallucinating.” He poked Sam to see if he was solid.

“There is such a thing as tactile hallucinations, you know?” Sam noted.

“Aaaaand… I found the geek. Anyway, chances are, if someone in this room is not real—gotta be the angel, right?” he asked Sam, trying to find an ally in this insane world where, apparently, angels in trench coats were a thing.

“I assure you, I am very real,” Cas said, unimpressed.

“That’s exactly what my hallucination would say,” he told Cas, pointing at him, before turning back to Sam. “I mean, look at him. Do you know anyone in real life who looks as devilishly handsome as _that_?” Dean motioned up and down Cas’ body.

“Well, strictly speaking, we don’t remember anyone we know in real life,” Sam pointed out. “So… I wouldn’t know.”

“I am sure my vessel feels flattered by you complimenting his physique…” A faraway look crossed Cas’ face. After a moment he added, “This is strange.”

“What is?” Sam asked.

“I am alone in this body.” The angel seemed unsettled by this, so Dean decided to comfort him, hallucination or not.

“We all are, buddy,” he said, clapping Cas’ shoulder and squeezing it gently, completely ignoring his rule about not groping strangers. This time, he didn’t get a glare for his efforts. Huh. Dean wouldn’t have pegged himself as the touchy-feely type, but somehow touching Cas came naturally, almost instinctively.

His comfort technique seemed to work—Cas appeared calmer, but he still insisted, “You don’t understand. There is no human soul inside this vessel. I am completely alone in here.”

“We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life,” Sam said.

Dean raised his eyebrows at him. Maybe the angel wasn’t the crazy one in this room after all…

“Tennessee Williams,” Sam explained, shrugging.

“Seriously. How much geekier can you get?” Dean asked. “Also, it’s creepy as hell that you know that when you don’t even know who you _are_.”

Dismissing Sam and his geeky nature, he turned back to Cas. “Hey, since you’re apparently the real deal, how’s about you use your powers to open the door?”

“That is the first thing I suggested,” Cas reminded them, but he took a step towards the door anyway and held out his hand. It began to glow a bright light and Dean had to look away and shield his eyes. When the light subsided, he looked towards the door again, but it was still closed.

“That did not work,” Cas commented pointlessly.

“What kind of angel are you anyway?” Dean asked. “Can’t fly, can’t open doors. Angels are supposed to have… I don’t know… some kind of mojo.” He turned to Sam. “Right?”

Sam, however, didn’t share his frustrations and instead seemed affronted on Cas’ behalf. “Dude, you can’t talk to him like that. He is an _angel_.” Great. An angel fanboy.

“Yeah, well, not a very good example of one,” Dean mumbled.

“I just healed your injured shoulder, maybe that should be ‘mojo’ enough for you.” The air quotes Cas made looked utterly ridiculous and despite the less than ideal situation they found themselves in, Dean couldn’t suppress a smile, which faltered a bit when Cas went on, “It seems like that act has drained more grace than anticipated.”

“So what, you’re like a battery that needs recharging?” Dean asked, ignoring Sam’ exasperated look.

“I don’t understand that reference,” Cas said, his expression and voice giving nothing away as if he wasn’t perturbed about his lack of common knowledge in the slightest, and something inside Dean’s mind stirred.

“That wasn’t even a reference,” Dean mumbled, scrubbing a hand over his face. It seemed like he was stuck in this room with some geek and a friggin’ _Angel of the Lord_. Great.

“Now what?” Sam asked, looking towards the locked door.

Now what, indeed.


	2. Chapter 2

“Maybe we should just call one of the numbers in our contacts?” Sam asked as he scrolled through said numbers on his phone. Dean and Sam had emptied their pockets and found cell phones (and bubble gum, keys, a knife, M&Ms and handcuffs with weird symbols on them that had made Cas fidget for some reason—but amongst the more useful items: cell phones). “We could ask them for help. They’re probably our friends and can tell us about ourselves.”

“ _Or_ they’re our enemies,” Dean pointed out. “For all we know, one of them locked us in here.”

Sam looked up from his phone and furrowed his brows. “Who even has enemies in real life?—On second thought, don’t answer that. You seem like the kind of person who’d have enemies, but even _you_ probably don’t have them in your contacts.”

“Keep your friends close…” Dean mumbled, trailing off. Another thought came to mind then. “Could be one-night-stands I never called back.”

“Yes, ‘Garth’ seems like the kind of person you’d have had a one-night-stand with,” Sam said, peering over Dean’s shoulder to get a look at the names in his contact list.

“What are you, homophobic? I could be gay,” Dean said and held his phone so that Sam couldn’t see the display anymore.

“My bad.” Sam didn’t sound particularly apologetic. “I should have realized when you hit on the angel and called him sexy.”

“I didn’t call him ‘sexy,’ I called him ‘handsome’ and that was an objective description of his looks.”

Cas sighed loudly.

“Something the matter?” Dean asked as he turned around to him, raising one eyebrow.

“Humans,” Cas said. “You are very unnerving. I don’t know what I am even doing on Earth.”

Before Dean could come up with a witty comeback, Sam, who had gone back to studying his contacts, said, “I have Garth’s number, too. And a ‘Dean’—that’s gotta be you, right? Hey, that means we know each other.—Oh, I even got ‘Cas’ in here.”

Dean grinned at the angel. Apparently, his nickname had been spot on. Then he quickly scrolled back to the ‘C’s and saw ‘Cas’ on his list, too.

Sam, meanwhile, was grinning brightly himself. “I have an angel’s cell phone number saved in my contacts! Wow!—Do you think that means we’re friends?”

“Or enemies,” Dean said with a shoulder shrug. “What is an angel using a cell phone for anyway?” he asked Cas, but said angel didn’t have an answer for him.

“Okay, I’m calling for help,” Sam decided, pushing a button to call someone on the list.

It turned out that the cell phones weren’t all that useful after all. Apparently, there was no reception.

***

Dean was leaning against the wall, tapping his foot while he was waiting for Sam to pick the lock of the door with a paper clip they had found amongst the papers and pens on the floor. He had been at it for what felt like an hour and apparently, he wasn’t a professional burglar. Dean could add that to the list of things he knew about the guy.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m calling it,” Dean said, pushing himself up off the wall and taking his gun out. “I’m shooting our way out of here.”

Sam looked up from where he was crouching in front of the door. “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

“We’re out of options, so… move it.” Sam reluctantly got up and took a few steps away.

“Dean, maybe you should—” Cas began, but Dean wasn’t in the mood for listening as he checked if the gun was loaded.

“Maybe everyone who has failed so far at the task of opening a goddamn _door_ should put a sock in it and let me handle this.”

He aimed at the lock and tried to ignore Sam and Cas behind him, who were whispering to each other, loud enough for Dean to hear. (“He was the _first_ to try and fail. Epically,” Sam pointed out. “Why would we put a sock in the door?” Cas asked, confused.)

If he was locked in here with these two numbnuts for much longer, Dean might lose his mind, so he didn’t stall any longer and took the shot.

The bullet ricocheted off the door and grazed Dean’s thigh all in the blink of an eye.

“Son of a bitch!” Dean ground out between his teeth, pressing his hand against his leg in an attempt to keep the blood in. He had so had enough of this goddamn day.

He had almost forgotten that they had an angel amongst them, but Cas, looking unimpressed, had already taken a step towards him and laid a hand on his shoulder, taking away the pain once more. When the familiar rush of tingling warmth spread through him, Dean wondered if you could get addicted to angel healing the same way you could to pain meds.

Afterwards, the angel stumbled a few feet to the nearest wall in order to brace himself against it and catch his breath.

“Uhm… thanks,” Dean said as he wiped his bloody hand on his shirt. He wasn’t quite sure if he should help the angel or reach out to him again, so instead he cleared his throat and said, awkwardly, “You always this drained after healing someone?”

Cas shot him a dark look and Dean wondered if it was impolite to comment on an angel’s powers or lack thereof.

“No,” Cas replied. “This is highly unusual. It does not feel like I have the powers of Heaven behind me.”

Since Cas seemed uneasy with this line of questioning, Dean decided to change the topic. “How come I’m the only one getting hurt around here?”

“Maybe because you’re the only one doing stupid things?” Sam suggested who had gone back to the door and was picking at the lock again.

This time, it opened almost immediately to a long, dark hallway.

“I weakened it for you,” Dean grumbled and took a step forward. Free at last. Sam had already stepped out into the hallway and was looking around curiously.

Cas, on the other hand, had taken a step back, pressing himself against the far wall.

Pausing on his way to the door, Dean looked back at Cas. “What’s up with you?”

“I think the door has been warded against angels,” Cas explained.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Dean took the few steps back to Cas, took ahold of the sleeve of his trench coat and dragged him towards the door.

“Dean… I can feel the wards keeping me from trespassing…” Cas protested, but Dean wasn’t in the mood for goofing around and unceremoniously pushed Cas through the door.—Or tried to, at least. The moment Cas reached the doorframe, an invisible force sent Dean and Cas flying back into the room and crashing against the wall.

“ _Seriously_?” Dean yelled as he rubbed the back of his head. This was the third time he had gotten hurt today.

“I told you. There has to be some sigil on that door that doesn’t let angels pass.” This time, Cas didn’t offer to heal Dean—he was probably still too weak for that. But he did offer Dean a hand to help him up.

“Yeah, there’s some kind of symbol on here,” Sam called back to them, who was examining the back of the door from the outside. He grimaced. “Ugh, I think this has been painted in _blood_.”

“Anti-angel warding,” Cas confirmed. “That also explains why I was unable to open the door.”

“Sure, let’s use _that_ excuse,” Dean mumbled. Great. Now what? “Angel of the Lord, my ass. Not only do you _not_ make things easier for us—you make them _more difficult_. How is that even possible?”

Well, he was not responsible for this angel. Angels could take care of themselves—right? They were supposed to watch over _humans_ , not the other way around. Who had ever heard of an angel in the role of damsel in distress?

“Well. Nice knowing ya.” Dean walked towards the door, ready to get the hell out of this deathtrap.

When he reached the door, he shot a quick look back at Cas, who was standing there, utterly lost, yet not commenting on the fact that Dean was about to walk out on him, leaving him trapped in a ten by ten room.

_Cas was standing in a ring of fire, staring intently at Dean. Yelling at him to run.—And run, Dean did._

Dean stopped short. It wasn’t so much the images that flashed through his mind, it was more the emotions accompanying them. Thinking about leaving Cas suddenly made his stomach lurch. He couldn’t let him down—he just couldn’t.

Dean ran a hand over his face. He didn’t even _know_ him! He should just get the hell out of here. And yet… Dean sighed deeply.

“So…” he began, taking a step back towards Cas. The angel was looking at him, his eyes boring into Dean’s in an oddly familiar way. “How do we get rid of the… the ‘sigil’ or whatever?”

“Way ahead of you,” Sam said, who was using a knife to carve something into the door—or more likely try and break the sigil.

Cas looked so surprised that Dean felt a bit self-conscious about the fact that he had even considered leaving him behind, if only for a second.

“Yeah, well. I guess we’re all in this together, huh?” Dean said, rubbing the back of his neck. Why did Cas keep staring at him like that? It was creepy is what it was. And still oddly familiar and reassuring in a way. “Stuck together for better or for worse.” Great, now he was rambling. Dean quickly shut his mouth.

After another few seconds of intense staring, Cas simply said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Sam called from behind the door, which shook Dean out of his stupor and he went to help Sam get rid of the sigil. They were goddamn heroes, rescuing their angel in distress. Everything else, they could deal with later, but right now sticking together was all that mattered.


	3. Chapter 3

As it turned out, the whole building was abandoned, and when they stepped outside into the late afternoon sun, they found themselves in the middle of nowhere. There was just one road leading up to the mental institution and no other buildings nearby.

“This just keeps getting better,” Dean mumbled.

It did get better, though, when they found an Impala parked next to the abandoned building that Dean’s keys fit.

Dean whistled through his teeth. “Sweet ride!” He was circling the car admiringly.

“Shotgun,” Cas said, which got both Dean and Sam to turn around to him, disbelieving. Huh. Shotgun-riding angel. That was a new one. Dean just shrugged his shoulders and went back to admiring the car. As long as he was the one to drive this beauty, he didn’t much care.

Sam, however, didn’t appear to be too happy about it. “Doesn’t this seem weird to anyone? I mean, shouldn’t _I_ be the one to ride up front?”

Dean shrugged yet again. “He called shotgun. Them’s the rules.—Not my fault if an angel is better at humaning than you.”

Sam glared at him for that, but Dean ignored him. In his inspection of the car, he had finally reached the trunk, which he popped open. He threw the duffle bag he found inside at Sam, who almost let it drop and shot Dean another glare, and some kind of impulse made him lift a false bottom. He was not prepared for the assortment of weapons. “Whoa!”

His exclamation got the attention of Cas and Sam, who stepped closer to peek over Dean’s shoulder.

“What is _that_?” Sam asked, eyes wide. “Are you some kind of assassin?”

As freaky as this was, it was also kind of cool, so Dean took out some of the weapons to take a closer look. There was a shotgun, an axe, a bow and arrows, different kinds of ammunition, some things Dean couldn’t even name…

He had just taken out a blade that looked somewhat familiar when he noticed that Cas had gotten strangely quiet next to him. When Dean looked at him more closely, he realized that the angel seemed uncomfortable, even though his expression gave nothing away. Dean had no idea _how_ he knew, but there was definitely something up with Cas.

“What?” Dean asked, looking from Cas to the blade in his hands and back. “That’s the same weapon you have, right?—What is it?”

Cas averted his eyes, letting them drift over his surroundings in an obvious attempt to avoid Dean’s gaze. “Nothing of import.”

Turning the blade around in his hands, a feeling of unease overcame Dean. There was that strange stirring again, in the back of his mind.

“C’mon,” Dean cajoled. “I just freed your angel ass from the anti-angel sigil back there. I think I deserve a bit more than—” He lowered his voice to imitate Cas’. “‘Nothing of import.’—We’re all in this together, remember?”

“ _You_ said that,” Sam butted in, ever so helpful.

“And I meant it,” he told Sam and then turned back around to Castiel, waiting expectantly.

After a long moment in which Cas’ eyes flitted to Dean’s and away again a couple times, he relented. “It is an angel blade.” When Dean just kept looking at him, he continued, “If you have it, it most likely means that you killed the angel it belonged to.”

“So, not just any assassin, an _angel_ assassin?” Sam asked, a grin tugging at his lips.

Dean shot him a dark look. This was not the time for Sam’s apparently strange sense of humor. Even though Cas had a stoic mask on, Dean could tell that he was unsettled by this development. Trying to put him at ease, Dean quickly put the angel blade back into the trunk of the car, burying it under a few knives and a cross for good measure.

“Let’s promise each other that no matter what happens, we won’t try to kill each other once we have our memories back,” he suggested, only half joking.

Sam, who had to have realized that his joke had fallen flat, added, “I really don’t think we’d have your cell phone number saved under speed dial if we were planning on killing you.”

No one said anything for a moment. Then Dean cleared his throat and changed the subject, since emotional moments didn’t seem to be his forte. (Something else he had figured out about himself.) “So. Where to now?”

“I don’t know how to get back to Heaven,” Cas stated, his shoulders drooping slightly.

“And even if you did, I don’t think that’s where you should go,” Dean said.

Cas was looking at him through narrowed eyes, so Dean explained, “You’ve gone native.” When Cas tilted his head, Dean said, “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. You have a cell phone, you’re calling shotgun… My guess? You’ve been around for a while.”

When Cas was staring at him, Dean simply stared back, not backing down, until Sam disrupted the silence, “Is no one here interested in finding out what kind of psycho drugged us and locked us up in an abandoned psych ward in the middle of nowhere?!”

“Yeah, okay.” Dean _was_ interested in that. He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to come up with a course of action. “Let’s find a motel in the next town and regroup. Figure out how to go from there.”

The others didn’t seem to have a better idea and so they got into the car—Sam rather grudgingly into the back seat, Dean behind the wheel and Cas into the passenger seat.

There was a cassette in the cassette deck simply labelled ‘Led Zeppelin’ and Dean was glad that he could blast some awesome music while driving so that he could just stop thinking for a while. All he had to do was follow the dwindling road until they would reach a town.

When ‘Ramble On’ came on, Dean glanced over at Cas and the next thing he knew, a spark of memory flashed through his mind.

_He was handing Cas a mixtape, smiling brightly at him and getting a tentative smile in return. A wave of affection washed over him._

Huh. Seemed like he really cared for this angel. A hell of a lot. He might not be an angel assassin after all.

“Watch where you’re going!” Sam’s voice brought him back to the present.

Dean quickly swiveled the car back onto the right lane. He thought about mentioning the memory flashes to Cas and Sam, but there was really nothing concrete that would give them an idea about who they were. Still, he might broach the subject later, once they had found a place to lay low. Maybe, if they had memory flashes of their own, they could piece together some things.

He had no idea why he wasn’t warier about Sam and Cas’ intentions. Granted, he didn’t know anything about himself save his name, but he didn’t think he was someone who trusted people easily. So how come he trusted these two idiots implicitly?

***

The sound of Sam’s light snoring filled the motel room, but there was no way Dean would be able to fall asleep with an angel wide awake in the same room. Apparently, angels didn’t need sleep or so Cas claimed.

They had decided to stick together instead of taking different rooms for safety reasons. After all, who knew who was after them? And if someone _was_ after them, there was safety in numbers. That didn’t mean that Dean would feel comfortable knowing that Cas was sitting around all night watching them sleep.

Dean was sitting up against the headboard of the bed, propped up against a pillow and he could barely make out the outlines of Cas, who was sitting on his own bed.

As he thought back to the strange vision of Cas standing in a ring of fire, Dean asked in a hushed voice, “Hey—does a ring of fire mean anything to you?—You know, apart from Johnny Cash?”

Cas wasn’t saying anything for such a long moment that Dean was beginning to think he might not have heard him.

“I do not know what a ‘Johnny Cash’ is,” the angel finally said. A clear deflection.

“Cas, can we not…” Dean rubbed a hand over his face. “I know this is strange and we don’t really know each other, but… we gotta trust each other here.”

Again, it took a while for Cas to respond in any way. When he did, he almost sounded tentative. “I woke up on Earth, unable to fly, with two humans who have an angel blade in their possession and know about holy fire—those are angel secrets no human should know about. And then there is the strange bond between us…”

“Yes, thank you!” Dean interrupted a bit too loud. He quickly looked over his shoulder at Sam’s bed, but his snoring didn’t falter. Turning back around to Cas, he continued, a bit more quietly, “I thought I was going crazy. What _is_ that?”

Cas leaned forward slightly so that Dean could make out his expression a bit better. He had narrowed his eyes. “I doubt _you_ can feel it. It’s my grace reaching out to your soul…”

“I can feel it, alright,” Dean interrupted him. “Like a strange… _thing—_ ” Because that was easier to say than ‘feeling.’ “—when you stare at me—yes, exactly like that! All intense. It’s creepy as hell, by the way. You don’t just have staring contests with people you barely know.” Or don’t remember knowing in any case…

“I am merely admiring your soul,” Cas deadpanned. “It is very beautiful.”

“Excuse me?!” Dean felt himself blush and he was glad that Cas probably couldn’t tell in the dark. Another quick look at Sam confirmed that he was still asleep and had not heard Cas’ ridiculous statement.

Of course, Cas, being an angel and all, didn’t even seem to have realized he had said something weird. He only tilted his head and asked, “What?”

“You don’t go around saying stuff like that! Jeez!” Dean berated him in a hushed voice.

Cas tilted his head even further to the side. “You said my vessel was beautiful. How is that different?”

“Handsome,” Dean corrected. “And I was just stating a fact.”

“So was I.”

That declaration was followed by silence that was only broken by Sam sighing in his sleep and turning around onto his other side.

“So…” Dean finally brought the conversation back to what was important. “What’s your grace doing reaching out to my soul, man?”

“Why is your soul calling out to my grace?” Cas countered.

Dean didn’t have any rebuttal for that.

“Such a bond between angel and human is highly unusual,” Cas continued after another moment of silence.

Dean snorted. “Yeah, I think we can agree that nothing about any of this is ‘usual.’”

“Angels aren’t supposed to associate with humans too much…” Cas tried to explain, but Dean just huffed out a laugh.

“That ship has sailed. You’re associating all over the place,” he said, gesturing between them.

They lapsed into silence and after a while, Dean tried to suppress a yawn, but failed. It had been a rather long day what with him getting punched by a stupid door, shot and thrown against a wall.

“Go to sleep, Dean,” Cas instructed. “I hear humans require it in order to function properly.”

Sam had actually been the one to explain it to the angel only a couple hours earlier, but Dean was too tired to point that out. Sleeping did sound great right about now, so Dean said, “Only if you lie down, too.”

“I told you, angels don’t…”

“Yeah, yeah, do I look like I care? I’m not gonna sleep while someone’s watching me.—Just… lie down and count sheep or something.”

Deliberately making human references that made Cas tilt his head in that dorky fashion was quickly becoming Dean’s favorite pastime.

And right on cue, Cas’ confused voice drifted over to him. “There are no sheep in this room.”

Dean smiled into his pillow as he lay down. “Count Sam’s snores then.”

He heard some shuffling as Cas followed his instructions and lay down, too, without even taking off his trench coat as far as Dean could tell. After a moment, the angel declared, “I think I will count your heartbeats.”

“Okay, no. See? That goes straight into creepy territory again.” He had to stop to yawn once more. As much fun as it was to tease Cas, Sam had been right about humans needing sleep from time to time.

“Night, Cas,” he said, and then, when he had already closed his eyes, he added with a small smile on his lips, “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

He had to wait for it for a few seconds, but Cas didn’t disappoint. “There are no bugs here, either.”

He totally blamed Cas’ grace ‘reaching out to his soul’ or whatever for how Cas deadpanning things like that made his heart swell with... something.

 


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing Dean noticed when he woke up the next morning was that Sam’s snoring had gotten louder. Then he realized that it was two people snoring in unison.

Dean snorted. Yeah, right. Angels didn’t require sleep. Cas was so full of shit. He should add that to his mental list of things he knew about him. Come to think of it, he should make a _real_ list of things he knew about the three of them. Deciding to do just that, Dean got up quietly as to not wake Sam and Mr. ‘Angels don’t sleep’ and got ready to start the day.

Five minutes later, he was sitting at the small table and was drawing a chart on a piece of paper, one column for each of them. First, he added ‘Friends?’ over all three columns. Then he crossed out the question mark because at this point his ‘enemies’ theory didn’t hold much water anymore. Or any water, really.

At the margin, he scribbled down ‘Home = somewhere in PA?’ That’s the state they were in, in any case, but then again, they had packed clothes and other travel necessities, so they might be on vacation or something.

Next, he added ‘criminal?’ to both his and Sam’s column. They had found a bunch of fake IDs and credit cards in the glove compartment. Apparently, they had quite a few aliases. Cas had stressed that there was no such thing as a criminal angel, so that one seemed to be all Dean and Sam.

Trying not to dwell too much on the fact that they might be the bad guys here, Dean wrote ‘crappy sense of humor’ into Sam’s column, ‘great sense of humor’ into his own and ‘no sense of humor’ into Cas’.

And since his sense of humor was so great, he added ‘full of shit’ to Cas’ column, making himself smile.

Getting serious again, he added a note about Cas’ ability to read minds. They had tried that before going to bed last night, hoping that Cas might be able to read some of their memories and find out what the hell was going on here, but Cas had said that he could only see fog, and no memory wanted to manifest.

He was just writing ‘Left in ring of holy fire’ underneath ‘strange grace-soul bond’ in between Cas’ and Dean’s own column, when—

 

_“So, get this,” Sam said, walking into the kitchen where Dean was making a sandwich and goofing around with Cas. Sam was carrying a laptop and frowning at the screen. “There’s this town in Pennsylvania called ‘Pine Grove’ where during the last year hardly anyone died.”_

_“Low mortality rate?” Dean asked, uninterested. “That’s not a case.—That’s barely even an_ anything _. And Pennsylvania? That’s a twenty-hour drive, man.”_

_“Maybe someone’s kidnapping reapers again. I think we should check it out.” Sam shrugged his shoulders. “There’s nothing big going on right now anyway. A road trip could be fun.—But if you’re not up for it…” He looked from Dean to Cas. “Cas and I can go and check it out. Right, Cas?”_

_“All right, all right, fine, I’ll come along,” Dean grumbled, giving Cas no chance to answer. “As if I’d let you drive Baby. Or use Cas’ crapfest of a car for such a long drive.”_

_“What is wrong with my car?”_

_“So much, buddy, so much…”_

“Dean?”

Dean shook his head. This had been the longest memory flash yet and it clearly confirmed that they were friends. No, more than friends. _Family_ , even if they weren't related by blood. Wow—interspecies family. That was something else… He looked up at Sam’s concerned face when Sam laid a hand on his shoulder. “You spaced out there for a second.”

“For longer than a second,” Cas corrected, who was standing next to Sam. “Seventeen seconds since we first tried to get your attention.”

Dean glanced down at his list and crossed out his guess that home was somewhere in Pennsylvania. When he caught Cas and Sam curiously eying the list, he quickly folded it and put it into his jeans pocket. Clearing his throat, he looked up at the others again.

“I think I just remembered… We might be a twenty-hour drive away from home.”

Cas’ mind-reading exercise seemed to have jump-started something inside of their minds because it turned out that Sam had something to add as well. He remembered being good with computers and used his newfound knowledge about himself to GPS track their movements over the last few weeks, which finally gave them a location they seemed to come back to time and again.

“Lebanon, Kansas? Really?” Dean asked. Sounded kind of like a dull place. Shrugging his shoulders, he got up to pack his things. “Guess we’re going to Kansas.”

He was just about to make a joke about not being in Kansas anymore, just to see Cas tilt his head and narrow his eyes again, when Sam said, “Twenty-hour road trip. Sounds like fun.”

Dean turned away to hide his smile. His family was so weird.

***

This time, Sam had learned from his mistakes and called shotgun as soon as the Impala was in sight so that Cas wound up riding in the back.

That didn’t keep Cas from leaning forward and putting his arms on the front seats to play ‘Heaven or Hell’ with them, wherein they had to guess where each human they saw would end up in the afterlife. A car that cut right in front of them without signaling—yeah, that douche would end up in hell for sure.

“No, he is just late for the birth of his daughter,” Cas countered. “He is a loving and caring family man and his soul will move on to Heaven.”

Dean met his gaze in the rearview mirror, trying to figure out his expression. “You’re just making that shit up, right? He’s an inconsiderate jerk. I vote for hell.”

“Humans do not get sent to Heaven or Hell for one small act,” Cas explained. “Also, there are no votes in this game. I win this round.”

“Well, then this game sucks,” Dean grumbled, glancing at Cas again. Sam, next to him, was rolling his eyes, but Dean ignored him. “There aren’t even any rules and there’s no way to prove who’s right.—Let’s play a _human_ road trip game.”

“Let’s not,” a woman’s voice suddenly came from the back seat. Dean almost hit the brakes right in the middle of the highway as he looked into the rearview mirror. A dark-skinned woman with dark curly hair who was sitting next to Cas was staring right at him through the mirror, her expression serious.

“Time is running out,” she said, her deadpan reminding Dean of Cas’ way of speaking, but before any of them could react in any way, the woman had vanished as suddenly as she had appeared.

“Who was _that_?” Sam asked, wide-eyed, looking from the back seat to Dean and then to Cas.

Dean was having a hard time concentrating on the road ahead. “She an angel, too?” he asked, searching for Cas’ eyes in the rearview mirror.

“No. She’s Death,” Cas said in his familiar deadpan.

“Come again?” Dean asked at the same time as Sam said, “Who?”

“Death,” Cas repeated, a bit louder.

“That’s what I _thought_ you said,” Sam mumbled while Dean blurted out, “Wait—Death is a _chick_?”

Their lives couldn’t possibly get any weirder.

“So,” Sam said slowly, ignoring Dean’s last comment, “ _Death_ just told us that time is running out?” His voice made it clear that he did not like this development one bit.

Sam had a point. That did not bode well for them.


	5. Chapter 5

They only made it about halfway to Lebanon before stopping at another motel for the night, even though Dean would have kept driving. But Sam insisted that he take a break, and Dean was too stubborn to let Sam behind the wheel of his beautiful car, especially after a warning from Death that might as well mean that they’d be in a car accident.

After the visit from Death, they were still a bit rattled, but Cas had reassured them that with an angel by their side, they wouldn’t die if he could help it. And since he had awesome healing powers, he would probably be able to help it.

“I can check you for illnesses if it will make you feel better,” Cas had offered and then had proceeded to do just that once inside their motel room by hovering his glowing hand over every inch of their bodies. When he was finished with Dean, he laid his hand on his shoulder and Dean felt healing energy rush throughout his body.

“What was that for?” Dean asked, jerking away from Cas in an attempt to cover up that it had once again felt surprisingly nice. This angel was seriously trying to get him addicted to being healed.

“Just being thorough,” Cas explained.

Dean decided not to mention that he hadn’t ‘been thorough’ with Sam, but he couldn’t hold back a disbelieving “Uh-huh.”

“There were some bacteria inside your body,” Cas mumbled defensively while avoiding eye contact, which supported Dean in his suspicion that that was not actually the reason.

“There are always some bacteria inside human bodies,” Sam butted in, who probably hadn’t caught on to the fact, yet that Cas was making up shit. “Getting rid of them is actually counterproductive.”

“In any case, you’re both healthy.”

“So, what was the visit from Death for?” Dean asked.

“Maybe some kind of warning?” Sam suggested.

Dean sighed. They had already had that discussion inside the car. “So what? We should stay inside until further notice?—She couldn’t have given us a timeline or anything?!”

“There is no point dwelling on it,” Cas pointed out. “You should go to sleep. Don’t worry. I’ll watch over you.”

Having an angel fend off Death if she came for them in the middle of the night sure had its perks, so Dean decided to let the whole ‘watch over them’ thing slide.

***

Dean was running as fast as his feet would allow him, but he was exhausted and that’s why ‘as fast as he could’ wasn’t nearly fast enough. Death was after him and she was going to get him. There was darkness all around him, and Dean didn’t know much about himself, but fake credit cards and a trunk full of weapons made it a pretty safe bet that he wouldn’t end up in Heaven once Death caught up to him.

He stumbled and fell, scraping his knee and spraining his ankle.

Cursing under his breath, he got up again and limped on, looking over his shoulder as he tried and failed to put distance between himself and Death. Where was Cas when he needed him?

Oomph!

Dean stumbled back and tried to make out in the dark what he had stumbled into.

“Dean,” Cas said and then looked around. “This dream seems rather sinister.”

Dream. Yeah, that made sense. But then… “Wait, are you really here?”

Instead of answering, Cas gently touched Dean’s arm. A second later, not only did his injuries vanish, but the darkness around them receded as well. As did the feeling of being chased.

“Did you just dream-heal me?!”

“You’re welcome.”

Dean shook his head. That was his Cas, alright. Not a dream version, then.

“What are you doing in my dreams?” Dean hadn’t intended to sound quite so accusing. Fortunately, Cas didn’t seem to get offended easily. Probably because he still had trouble with human facial expressions and tones of voice.

“Your subconscious was calling out to me,” he explained, looking around interestedly, now that the darkness was gone and a dreamscape out in nature had appeared. They were in some kind of meadow, which was… not what Dean would have expected from one of his dreams. Maybe it was Cas’ subconscious weighing in.

Dean wondered if they did this kind of thing a lot. If it was normal for them, Cas walking around in his dreams as if it was no big deal. Leaving aside the whole ‘being inside his head’ thing, them being so comfortable with each other that Cas answered him when his subconscious ‘called out to him,’ when he needed him, even though he didn’t have to ask for it—that required a lot of trust and… apparently a soul-grace bond thing, whatever the hell that was.

“Well… thanks,” Dean said.

“You’re welcome,” Cas repeated.

They stared at each other for a moment.

How to tell an angel that dreams were a private thing? There was nothing even going on. Some birds chirping, a slight breeze and—were those _bees_ buzzing around? In any case, nothing embarrassing or anything of the sort. Still. You didn’t just go poking around in someone’s head uninvited. Or only invited by the other’s subconscious.

“So what, you’re just hanging around?” Dean asked when neither of them had spoken for a while.

Cas’ eyes darted away from his. “Your dream feels comfortable.”

“Funny,” Dean said. “I thought it was ‘sinister.’”

“You were bloodied and your heart rate was elevated when I joined you in your dream. I took care of those things.”

“It was a _nightmare_. They’ll do that to ya.”

Dean rubbed a hand over his face. How could someone be tired while _asleep_?

“It’s just…” he started when the silence between them started to drag on. “This sucks, man.” Dean gestured at their surroundings, trying to encompass the whole situation they had found themselves in. “I don’t even know who I am.”

Cas had the audacity to actually roll his eyes at that.

“What?” Dean asked gruffly.

“Humans always find something to complain about,” Cas said. “I am cut off from Heaven and unable to fly. You don’t hear me complaining about it.”

“Actually, I do,” Dean said. Even this felt comfortable, though—teasing each other, seeing how far he could go without Cas getting a specific reference or a sarcastic comment or an idiom… He wondered if he had taught Cas all there was to know about human mannerisms before and if the angel had simply forgotten about it.

Teaching him sounded like fun, so he explained, “You know, when humans feel a… a subconscious calling out to them, they wake the other one up. They don’t come into their dreams and heal them.”

There Cas went, tilting his head again. “Of course they don’t,” he said, his brows furrowed. “They do not possess an angel’s power of healing nor do they have the ability to enter each other’s dreams.”

“Yeah, but… Never mind.”

Even though the nightmare was gone, Dean felt exhausted. Could you fall asleep inside a dream? This whole memory loss thing was weighing on him, not to mention Death gunning for them.

“How do humans comfort each other?” Cas’ voice brought him out of his thoughts. When Dean looked up at him, he added, “They can’t wrap their wings around each other.”

No idea where that was coming from, Dean shrugged his shoulders and explained, “I guess they use their arms instead.”

The next moment, he had an armful of angel, who awkwardly held on to him.

“That was not…” Dean started, but trailed off because—yeah, that kind of _was_ an invitation. Still, Dean had to shift and move his arms to show Cas how a human hug worked.

Even though the angel knew squat about appropriate human behavior, he did make an effort. That more than anything made Dean question if instead of expecting Cas to adapt human mannerisms, he should learn about angelic ones.

“Hey,” he mumbled into Cas’ neck. “How do _angels_ comfort each other?”

“I just told you,” Cas replied, making no move to let go of Dean and at the same time managing to sound slightly irritated. “They wrap their wings around each other.”

Okay, he might have to get more specific here. “What about if they don’t have any wings?”

“All angels have wings, Dean.”

Dean rolled his eyes, even though Cas couldn’t see him. “Thanks for the lesson in angel anatomy.”

Since he was the human here, he should probably be the one to take a step back and end the long ass hug, but he had just decided that he didn’t want to pressure Cas into behaving like a human. That was the only reason he let the hug go on for as long. It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that as far as comforting techniques went, this one really did the trick rather well.

“I meant what if it was a human who wanted to comfort an angel,” Dean clarified.

“Don’t be absurd. A human would not wish to comfort an angel.”

Wow, Cas was taking obliviousness to a whole new level. “Okay, dumbass.—What do _I_ do if I want to comfort you right back?”

“Oh.” Finally. At least he got it when Dean spelled it right out for him. “Oh, well… I… uh… I suppose this works.”

As Dean hugged him tighter, he had to admit to himself that Cas was right. Different species notwithstanding—this worked just fine.


	6. Chapter 6

Watching Cas sleep once more, Dean realized that he had yet to make fun of him for it. He wondered if angels could dream, too, and if so, what they dreamed about.

Too lazy to get up and get dressed, Dean fished for his jeans that were lying on the floor next to his bed and took out his list. He unfolded it in order to add ‘soulmates’ underneath ‘strange grace-soul bond’ between Cas’ and his own column. It was a ridiculous thought, of course, but the word seemed to fit. Cas had instinctively known when Dean had needed him inside a freaking _dream_. Plus, Dean was pretty sure he wasn’t someone who needed or wanted comforting from anyone—but they had been really good at the comforting each other thing. Which he hadn’t needed—or wanted—but had still felt nice.

Dean hadn’t even been aware that while deep in his thoughts he was doodling around the ‘soulmates’ note on his list, but when he paused, he realized that he had drawn wings.

He huffed and rolled his eyes at himself. This was stupid. If Cas saw this list, he would tell him off for being utterly ridiculous. _Angels don’t have human soulmates, Dean,_ he would say disapprovingly.

Annoyed, Dean crumpled the paper up and aimed at the trashcan. It wasn’t like he needed a list to keep track of their personalities anyway. The crumpled paper bounced off the rim of the trashcan and landed on the floor next to it. Damn.

Dean was just getting up in order to pick up the piece of paper when the onset of another memory flash made him sit back down on his bed.

_“Every time something goes wrong, you immediately assume it is an angel’s fault.” Cas was glowering at him, which only pissed Dean off more._

_“That’s ’cause nine times out of ten it_ is _!” he pointed out._

_“Blame first, ask questions later. Is that it?”_

_“That’s not even how the saying goes!”_

_“You are wrong—as humans so often are. There is nothing for you to hunt here!”_

_The narrow-eyed look on the angel’s face told Dean that if Cas could, he would totally fly off right about now. Running away from confrontation was what he was good at, after all, and Dean felt a sense of spiteful satisfaction that Cas couldn’t just up and leave anymore._

“No, _you_ are wrong!” Dean countered, voice raised, pointing at Cas.

The angel was looking at him nonplussed. “I do not believe I am. Sam told me so himself,” he said after a beat of silence.

“Uhm… what?” Coming out of the memory and back into the here and now was giving him whiplash. Apparently, the angel had a way of getting under his skin.

“Sam will be right back with some food,” Cas said slowly, which made Dean suspect he was repeating something he had already told him.

Having Cas all understanding and level-headed when they had just yelled at each other was seriously messing with Dean’s head. There was still some pent-up anger inside of him, but he couldn’t very well take it out on Cas—on _this_ Cas.

“Are you alright, Dean?” Cas asked because _of course_ he noticed something going on.

“Peachy,” Dean answered and then quickly changed the subject, finding something else he could hold against Cas. “You shouldn’t have let Sam leave alone. What if Death gets him?”

That was how the buddy system got implemented once Sam was back (luckily unharmed). Of course, the buddy system pretty much meant that the _three of them_ had to stick together at all times so that no one was ever alone. Cas tried to make a point about how _he_ could still move around by himself, since he was an angel and all, but Death was… well, _Death_ , so Dean was having none of it, especially since Cas was unable to fly away should the need arise.

“Seriously, how is this our life?” Dean complained when Cas and Sam almost accompanied him into the bathroom when he wanted to finally go change out of his PJs. Dean quickly shut the door in their faces and continued a bit louder, so they could still hear him, “What did we ever do to piss off Death?”

“I think Cas tried to kill her once,” Sam’s tentative voice came through the door.

“Come again?!” Dean gaped. Figured that it was the angel’s fault that Death was on their asses.

“I might be remembering incorrectly,” Sam hastened to add. “It was really just a quick image that flashed through my mind where he… stabbed her from behind?”

“What kind of moron would ever try to kill Death?!” Dean asked as he came back out of the bathroom and threw the PJs on his bed. “That has to be the most idiotic thing anyone has ever done!”

“Lay off him, will you?” Sam said. “You don’t know what kind of idiotic things _you_ have done.”

“Not _killed_ _Death_ , I can tell you that much.”

“You _did_ try to kill _me_ once, though,” Cas butted in.

Apparently, they had all had a few memories trying to come to the surface, and so they shared all the memory flashes in an attempt to piece them together to get some sort of timeline.

“You should have told me that earlier,” Cas said when Dean mentioned the low mortality rate in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. “A possible abduction of reapers could explain why Death got involved.”

“So what? Not many people die in Pine Grove.” Dean shrugged as he went to get himself a bottle of beer, ignoring Sam’s disapproving frown. “I don’t see how that would concern _us_.—Doesn’t even sound like there’s anything to fix if you ask me,” he added as he opened the bottle of beer. “Just sounds like there’s an angel watching over the town.” Dean raised his eyebrows at Cas and then winked at him for good measure before taking a refreshing swig.

“I do not know what it means when a human closes only one eye,” Cas deadpanned. “Do you mean to tell me that you are half tired?”

Dean rolled his eyes. What was the point in teasing someone if that someone didn’t even realize he was being teased. “You should really learn how to read human facial expressions.”

“In that case, it just means that Dean’s being a jerk,” Sam supplied helpfully.

Dean felt the urge to call Sam ‘bitch,’ but that seemed like a harsh word to call a friend, so he resisted.

Being cooped up in a motel room was making Dean antsy and he couldn’t wait to get back on the road. But since they seemed to have unfinished business in Pennsylvania, Sam was adamant about going back there instead of checking out Lebanon.

“Well, as long as you’re paying for the gas money,” Dean finally relented, even though he didn’t like the fact that they had basically wasted a whole day. Would have wasted two by the time they were back in Pine Grove.

“Sure, Dean. I’ll pay for the gas money with one of our _fake credit cards_ ,” Sam said, rolling his eyes.

He had turned on his laptop and was now browsing the Internet in an attempt to find out about the town they had just left the day before, heaving a big sigh.

Cas was watching him, his head tilted to the side. “Are you… sad?”

Sam stopped typing and looked up at Cas. “What? No, I’m… frustrated, I guess,” he said and scratched his eyebrow. Cas was staring at Sam, and Dean could basically see him categorize his expression under ‘frustrated.’

Dean snorted. “His bitchface isn’t really that good an example to learn about human expressions.”

Cas shot him a dark look and Dean certainly didn’t need a guide on angel expressions to know what that look meant.

“Let me comfort you,” Cas decided as he turned back around to Sam. “I recently learned how to do that the human way.”

Oh boy. Dean ducked behind his beer, knowing what was about to happen.

“Thanks, Cas, but that’s not…” Sam began. The end of the sentence was muffled as Cas had pulled him to his feet and embraced him.

Dean took another swig from his beer, watching the hug go on for far too long. Sam let go after a few seconds, but Cas didn’t seem to care and simply held on. Maybe Dean should have mentioned the right, ‘human’ way to hug, after all.

“Uhm… that’s… Thanks… You can let go now,” Sam finally mumbled.

“The average human hug lasts 83.9 seconds,” Cas pointed out, not letting go. “We have over 50 seconds left to hug.”

Somehow, Sam managed to duck out of the hug, which looked kind of funny because he almost had to dislocate his shoulder in the process. Watching him wrestle an angel in order to get out of a hug and duck his huge Sasquatch body under Cas’ arms made Dean snort into his beer, which in return earned him a bitchface from Sam. Oh, hey, it actually _did_ look kind of ‘frustrated.’

“Yeah?” Sam asked still catching his breath from wrestling Cas, as he sat back down. He tried to smooth down his hair that was sticking up in a funny way. “Where’d you get that data from?”

“From the hug Dean and I shared.”

Dean’s beer went down the wrong pipe and sent him into a coughing fit.

Sam looked stumped for a second. Then the corners of his mouth twitched and a self-satisfied smile spread across his face as he said, “Well, seems like _he’s_ not the best example of a human to learn from, either.”

By that time, Dean had regained his ability to speak and thus defend himself. “It was a _dream_ hug,” he explained. “It wasn’t like it was a _real_ hug or anything.”

Cas was looking at him with a strange expression and Dean averted his eyes. It looked like he could use a guide on angel expressions, after all.

Sam, the jackass, was grinning even wider. “You realize how that makes it sound _worse_ , right?”

“Shuddup!” Dean mumbled into his beer.


	7. Chapter 7

_“So what, the mental institution closed down because all patients suddenly weren’t sick anymore and could march on home?” Dean said, making his disbelief clear._

_They were sitting in a run-down motel room, trying to figure out what to do next. So far, the town seemed weird, but they hadn’t been able to put their finger on why, especially since Cas didn’t feel anything demonic going on. Then again, Cas’ angel senses hadn’t been all that reliable lately. Probably came with the territory of being a_ fallen _angel._

 _“It’s not just that hardly anyone is dying here,” Sam said. “Someone is actively_ healing _people.” He was raising his eyebrows at Cas, who in return was looking from Sam to Dean and back._

 _“It isn’t_ me _,” Cas said after a beat of silence._

_“No, I know,” Sam reassured him. “Just… sounds like an angel maybe?”_

_Before anyone could comment on that, the door flew open and a slightly overweight middle-aged man strolled in as if he owned the place._

_Dean got up and was ready to fight before the stranger had even opened his mouth._

_“Cas-ti-el!” The man—no, judging by his entrance and holier-than-thou attitude probably ‘angel’—didn’t even spare Dean and Sam a cursory glance. “I knew I felt an angelic presence enter my town.”_

_“Douche alert,” Dean mumbled, nudging Sam._

_“Puriel,” Cas said and for once Dean couldn’t read his tone at all. Was Cas happy to see this douche or was the newcomer bad news?_

 

The buzzing of his phone startled Dean out of the memory this time. They were sitting in a diner, having lunch before they would drive the rest of the way back to where all of this had started.

A glance at the display told him that it was ‘mom’ calling. He debated letting it go to voicemail, but for some reason he had accepted the call before he could think about it further.

He only got as far as “Uh…” when a woman (his mother!) started in on him, “You said you would be back by now. What happened?”

His mom’s voice sounded more like that of a sister, which was weird, but then again, she might have had him as a teenager for all he knew.

“Uhm… slight hiccup,” Dean said when he realized that she was still waiting for an answer. He shrugged at Cas and Sam who were watching him curiously.

“And you couldn’t have called?”

“There was really bad cell phone coverage and then… there was this whole thing where we had to stay in a crappy motel… We’re actually just on our way to do the thing… Might be a couple more days.” He was rather proud of himself that he got through all of that without giving anything away.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you in a few days then.” And then, as if it were the most normal thing to end a phone call on, she added, “Tell Sam I love him,” and hung up.

“What?!” Dean yelled into the disconnected phone.

He looked down at the cell phone, perplexed, and since his mom couldn’t hear him anymore, he turned his glare on Sam. “What the hell, man?! You’re getting it on with my _mother_? That is so sick!”

A few heads turned their way, but Dean was good at ignoring people and so he didn’t pay them any mind.

Before he got any sort of answer, Sam’s phone buzzed, and he seemed relieved for the excuse to get out of having to justify himself.

His brows furrowed as he was reading a message on his phone. “My mom just texted me if everything is okay because you’re acting weird,” Sam said, looking up at Dean.

Their gazes locked. Without saying a word, they pulled up the contact information for ‘mom’ and held their cell phones next to each other. Huh. Same number.

“We’re _brothers_ ,” Sam said, sounding surprised as he stated the obvious.

“Well, that makes sense,” Dean said, relieved that he had been wrong about a love affair, and when Sam looked at him at a loss, he added, “Explains why you’re so insufferable.”

“Oh, _I’m_ insufferable?”

“I believe that’s what I just said.”

“I’m glad you found your family,” Cas interrupted their squabbling, even though he didn’t sound ‘glad’ at all. “Now, maybe we can focus on finding mine.”

Dean was about to say something about how Cas didn’t need to look anymore—he _had_ found his family, but the angel already continued, “I remembered… I believe there might be an angel back in Pine Grove. I would like to find my brother as well. He probably knows the way to Heaven.”

Suddenly, Dean hated their plan of going back to Pennsylvania. Should have stuck to Dean’s idea and continued on their way to Lebanon instead of going to a place where some sort of douchey angel was waiting to snatch Cas away.

Dean took a big bite from his burger as he thought about ways to delay their arrival in Pine Grove.

***

“Are you serious?” Sam asked as Dean was pulling over at a motel. “We’re almost there. Couple more hours. How can you possibly be too tired to drive the rest of the way there?”

Sam had a point. It wasn’t even ten yet, but Dean had tried and failed to come up with delaying tactics, so suggesting they stop for the night was all he had.

“Well, _I_ don’t need any sleep, but our angel here has required a lot of sleep these past few days.” He still hadn’t ribbed Cas about that—was about time.

“I don’t need any sleep,” Cas promptly denied from the back seat.

“Yeah, well. We don’t know what we’re walking into here. With our memories still on the fritz I say we better be well-rested and prepared.”

That argument seemed to do the trick because Sam reluctantly let it go and checked them in.

When Sam was long asleep, Dean was still lying awake trying to get his brain to remember more about angel douche, but he had never had any control over the memory flashes and wasn’t having much luck now.

Cas, true to his word, was not sleeping, either, but Dean wasn’t in the mood to talk to him, so he just ignored the angel and pretended to be asleep.

Pretending for so long finally made him drift off for real.

Even though he was still inside the same motel room, Dean knew instinctively that he was dreaming. Cas was sitting at the table and playing around with a crumpled piece of paper he had straightened out. Dean, immediately wide awake (while still asleep), got up, went over to Cas and roughly snatched the familiar paper out of his hands.

“Gimme that!” he said gruffly, hoping against hope that the angel hadn’t read his list. He ripped the paper up into tiny pieces for good measure.

“We are in a dream,” Cas told him as if Dean weren’t aware of that.

“I know,” Dean said, his voice still raised as he felt anger well up inside of him. “That was a symbolic gesture to show you I don’t appreciate you going through my stuff!—And by the way, I don’t appreciate you hanging around my dreams, either.”

Cas ignored both of these excellent points in favor of pointing out, “There is no such thing as ‘soulmates.’”

“I know that!” Dean said yet again, this time more forceful, but Cas, still no expert in reading tone, didn’t lay off.

“Even if there _were_ , angels don’t have souls.”

“That’s fine,” Dean said, forcing an unconcerned grin. And then, trying to get Cas to back off for good, he added, “Who would want an _angel_ as a soulmate anyway?”

As soon as the words had left his mouth, he wanted to take them back. Cas was looking at him unblinkingly, but didn’t say anything. ‘Abort, abort,’ Dean’s brain supplied, but his mouth was already forming words on its own. “Why don’t you go dream-stalk Sam for a change?”

Still, Cas didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he corrected, “Dreamwalk.”

“Yeah, that.”

Another beat of silence. “I can see I have made you uncomfortable,” Cas finally said. “That was not my intention.—If it will make you feel better, I could take the memory of this conversation away from you.”

“What? No. That would _not_ make me feel better,” Dean said.

The link between his brain and his mouth was finally working correctly again and he sighed. Maybe in his attempt to cover up his embarrassment he had gone a bit overboard. Great. Now he had to set things straight and he didn’t think he was all that great at apologies.

Still, he opened his mouth to try and explain when Cas touched two fingers to Dean’s head.

***

When Dean woke up, he thought he might have had a strange dream, but he couldn’t pin it down. It probably wasn’t important anyway.


	8. Chapter 8

“If you go any slower, we’ll be pulled over for impeding traffic,” Sam commented from the passenger seat.

“There’s not even anyone behind us,” Dean groused.

He still hadn’t remembered anything else about Cas’ ‘brother’ and he didn’t like being at a disadvantage.

Before they had hit the road, he had taken the angel blade out of the trunk and had hid it on the inside of his jacket as a precaution, making sure Cas didn’t see him do so.

“Seriously, Dean. You’re stalling,” Sam piped up again.

Dean sighed as he realized that it was time to share his concerns. Glancing at the rearview mirror at Cas, Dean steeled himself and said, “I think the angel might be the bad guy here.”

Cas glared right back at him. “Or maybe _you_ are the bad guy here,” he countered in an unusually irate voice.

Okay, that was _it._ Cas had been quiet ever since Dean had gotten up, only occasionally darting an angry glance at him.

“What is with you today?” Dean snapped at him. “Did I do something to piss you off?”

“Maybe you should remember our pact not to kill each other.” Cas let his eyes drift to Dean’s jacket as if he could see right through it.

Friggin’ angels. Dean should have known that it would be impossible to hide something like this from him. Still, Cas had to know Dean wouldn’t use the blade on _him_ —plus, he had acted cagey before Dean had even gotten the angel blade out of the trunk. Maybe Cas wasn’t lying exactly, but he sure as hell wasn’t telling the whole truth either.

_Dean had his arms crossed as he was holding Billie’s gaze. They were standing in the bathroom of the motel room and Dean realized that Death didn’t have a sense for privacy, either._

_Granted, Dean wasn’t Puriel’s number one fan, but Cas had been happy enough to have another angel to chat with, so conspiring against his angel pal probably wouldn’t give him any brownie points with Cas._

_“Dean? You okay in there?” Sam’s voice called out. He had probably heard them talking in the bathroom._

_Before he could answer, Billie said, pointedly, “Take care of it, or I will.” And then she was gone in the blink of an eye._

_Dean wiped a hand over his face and sighed. Cas wouldn’t be happy about that._

_“We can’t let Puriel continue this Eden on Earth nonsense,” Dean said as soon as he rejoined Cas and Sam in the main room. “He’s messing up the death numbers.”_

_Sam nodded understandingly, but Sam wasn’t the one he was concerned about._

_“Do you think you could talk to him, Cas?” Sam suggested._

_Cas narrowed his eyes. “Puriel is only trying to help.”_

_Dean kept his tone light when he replied, “Well, his ‘helping’ only messes up the cosmic balance, so…” He trailed off, hoping Cas would be able to come to the only sane conclusion here._

_No such luck. “He is healing people. How is that a bad thing?”_

_“He’s playing_ Chuck _,” Dean corrected. “We all know what happened last time an angel wanted to play God.”_

_Okay, that was a low blow, but he had to make Cas understand. He didn’t want to find out what Billie ‘taking care of things’ looked like._

_“Every time something goes wrong, you immediately assume it is an angel’s fault.”_

_“That’s ’cause nine times out of ten it is!”_

 

“Dean, the road!”

Dean shook his head, chasing away the images flashing through his mind’s eye. He was slowly getting the hang of coming out of memory flashes with minimal confusion.

“I know why Billie—I mean Death was being all creepy!” Dean told Cas and Sam and proceeded to tell them about death numbers and cosmic balances, barely holding back an ‘I told you so’ when he was looking at Cas.

Cas, however, had to have heard the ‘I told you so’ loud and clear anyway because he was narrowing his eyes at him and said, “You will not kill my brother.” After a short pause, he added in a low voice, “Or I will kill yours.”

“Excuse me?” Sam squealed, swiveling around in his seat to look at Cas with wide eyes.

“That was what you humans call a ‘bluff,’” Cas explained. When Dean and Sam exchanged a stunned look, he seemed to realize his mistake and said, “I believe I should not have told you that.—That was _not_ a bluff.”

Dean snorted. “Remind me to teach you how to play poker someday.”

When Cas didn’t react to that one way or another, Dean decided to get serious. “Look, I’m not planning on _killing_ Puriel, it’s just…”

“Puriel?” Cas interrupted him. “You know my brother’s name?” _And haven’t told me?_ hung unsaid between them. Somehow Dean didn’t seem to be able to do anything right today as far as Cas was concerned.

“Well… yeah. So?”

Instead of answering, Cas got a faraway look and was mumbling some words in a language Dean didn’t know. Dean kept glancing in the rearview mirror to try and catch his eye, but Cas appeared to be miles away.

“Cas?” Sam asked eventually and after another few seconds had ticked by, the angel finally seemed to come back to himself.

“Puriel will be awaiting our arrival,” he declared.

“Wait. Did you just… _communicate_ with him?” Dean asked.

“Of course,” Cas said, unconcerned, as if he hadn’t given away the element of surprise as their last ace up their sleeve. Dean _definitely_ needed to teach him how to play poker.

If Dean had known that Cas needed Puriel’s name in order to contact him telepathically, he would not have offered it. Friggin’ angels with their hive mind or whatever. _Angel radio_ , his own mind supplied, but for once, he told it to shut up.

***

Once back in Pine Grove, Dean made sure that Puriel met them on their turf (which, incidentally, was the same run-down motel they had stayed in before). Dean just _knew_ the angel was a major dick, but Puriel didn’t let it show. Instead, he was overly nice and when Dean explained about the disturbance of the cosmic balance, he even acted all _understanding_.

So, what else was Dean to do but try to catch him in a lie. Most of his sentences when addressing Puriel began with “So what you’re saying is…” (“So what you’re saying is that we haven’t told you this before?” – “So what you’re saying is that you didn’t know that you were messing everything up.”) Now he only had to remember something that contradicted what Puriel had said.

Unfortunately, it turned out that being unable to bluff wasn’t an _angel_ thing, but a _Cas_ thing. He could add that to his list about things he knew about Cas. Oh, right, he had thrown the list away. Something nagged at him in the back of his mind, but he was used to the feeling by now (came with the territory when your brain tried to remember basically your whole life), so he ignored it.

“Yes, that is what he just said,” Cas interrupted Dean when he was about to repeat Puriel’s claim that he had no idea what had happened to them in the abandoned mental institution.

“More importantly, do you know how to get home?” Cas asked Puriel, cutting off another question Dean could have asked.

Dean felt a stab of… something when he heard Cas refer to Heaven as ‘home.’ That just wasn’t right. They had been on their way ‘home’ before Sam had to go and decide to finish whatever it was they had started in Pine Grove.

For a split second, Dean hoped that Puriel didn’t know the way to Heaven either, but then the dickwad answered, “Of course.—Do you want me to show you the way?”

Cas was looking at Dean with an expression he hadn’t seen on the angel’s face before—what, was he waiting for permission or something? Good luck with that, Dean sure as hell wasn’t giving him his blessing to run off with their number one suspect.

After a long moment in which Dean held his ground and just stared right back, Cas dropped his gaze and then the doubt was gone from his eyes as he nodded at Puriel.

“Yes.”

Dammit. It had taken great strength and willpower to stay silent, hold Cas’ gaze and make his disapproval clear via a stern look. Why was Cas going ahead and doing the exact opposite of what Dean wanted?

Well, there was only one logical thing to do.

“Okay, let’s go,” Dean said, clapping his hands together and making three heads turn his way.

“Humans are not allowed in Heaven,” Puriel said. After a short pause, he added, “Unless you want to die?”

Was that a threat? Did angel douche seriously just threaten him? Dean was about to give him a piece of his mind when Cas took a step forward.

“Dean… Sam… These last few days… This was… something.”

 _This was_ something _?!_ That’s all he got for saving his angel ass? If it hadn’t been for him and Sam, Cas would still be stuck in the psych ward.

Dean was about to point that out, but instead he settled for a pissed off, “So this is goodbye?” He was staring right into Cas’ eyes, his arms crossed over his chest.

Cas was the first one to look away. His eyes flitted first to Sam, then to Puriel before they landed on Dean once more.

“How do humans say goodbye?”

Oh, hell no! He was not going to get all mushy, especially not when it was Cas who decided to leave them.

“They say ‘good riddance.’”

“Dean—” Sam said and Dean gave a small jump. He had forgotten that Sam was in the room.

“Good riddance,” Cas repeated, still not all too familiar with sarcasm. His own tone of voice sounded as if he were saying all the sappy things Dean had tried to avoid.

“Cas —” Sam tried again, but Cas interrupted him.

“Good riddance, Sam.”

“Good riddance,” Puriel repeated, but the slight smirk on his face told Dean, _he_ at least, knew exactly what he was saying.

Dean had half a mind to pull out his angel blade, but he suspected Cas wouldn’t forgive him for offing his brother just for being a dick.

Before Dean could do anything else, though, Puriel was leading Cas out of the motel room and the next moment, it was just Sam and Dean left.


	9. Chapter 9

“Did you have to be a dick to him?” Sam turned on him once they were alone in the room.

Dean balled his hands into fists, but tried to go for an indifferent tone of voice when he said, “He wanted to go. So now he’s gone.—He was a weird little nerdy dude anyway.”

Sam was looking at him, unimpressed, and Dean had a feeling that he knew that ‘weird little nerdy dude’ was not an insult, that Dean had actually _liked_ that about Cas.

“He was clearly waiting for you to tell him to stay,” Sam said, crossing his arms.

“What is he, my dog?”

Sam just looked at him for a moment. Then he rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You’re a jerk.”

“Bitch.” Now that they were brothers, he was totally allowed to say that.

“I hate to interrupt Winchester bonding time.”

Dean flinched and spun around, his hand automatically going for the angel blade still hidden in his jacket.

“Jeez, don’t you ever knock?” he asked when he saw Billie leaning against the wall. Then her words registered and he added, “What the hell does a rifle have to do with anything?”

Billie was shooting him a strange look. “Your time is up,” she finally stated, simply ignoring his question.

“Wait, what?” Sam asked. “We took care of the problem. Puriel won’t be preventing deaths in this town anymore. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Billie’s gaze zeroed in on Sam. “You would think that after everything, you would not be so easily fooled.”

Dean and Sam exchanged a look, but before they could ask any questions, Billie spoke up again.

“You are different.” She was looking them up and down and came to the conclusion, “Someone messed with your minds.—Is that why you are being even more useless than usual?”

“Depends. Is ‘useless’ code for ‘charming’?” Dean asked.

“It’s code for ‘aggravating.’” Billie let her gaze wander around the room, seemingly considering her options. “I should let this be a lesson to you. But you are enough trouble with a more or less sound mind.”

Without any warning, she snapped her fingers. The next moment, a wave of memories assaulted Dean, making him feel like his head was about to explode.

 

 _“It’s_ clearly _a trap,” Dean said._

_“Puriel has no reason to trap me.—Sam was the one to suggest I talk to him.”_

_Dean snorted. “But does it have to be in a creepy abandoned nut house way outside of town?”_

_When all he got was a shoulder shrug from Cas, he decided, “Well, I’m not letting you walk into a trap alone. We’re all going.”_

_Cas’ face fell into a frown. “I do not think he likes you very much.”_

_“I don’t like him either. He’ll have to cope.”_

_***_

_“I told you! I_ told _you! Didn’t I tell him, Sam?”_

_“Maybe you could gloat later?” Sam asked, sizing up the dozen or so people with guns who had them cornered and were drawing the circle tighter around them. They should never have agreed to meet in this creepy-ass insane asylum. He had totally called it._

_One man stepped forward and started patting Sam down, finding his angel blade and handing it off to a woman behind him._

_“Joke’s on you,” Dean said flippantly. “As if that’s the only angel blade we got.”_

_The man immediately turned on him, which was what he had been hoping for. As long as the focus was on him, they would leave Sam and Cas alone. Before Dean got searched for weapons, though, a voice from the doorway interrupted the proceedings._

_“They can keep their weapons, Myles.” Puriel strode in and immediately, the people made space for him, their guns still aimed at Dean, Sam and Cas._

_The man addressed as ‘Myles’ took a few steps back and rejoined the circle._

_“They are defenseless anyway,” Puriel continued as he stopped right in front of them, and Dean very much wanted to punch him in his stupid face._

_Instead, he addressed the humans in the room. “Not for nothing, but you know that he isn’t_ God _, right?”_

_“He is better than God,” a kid, no older than 20, said. “He cares about us.”_

_There was really nothing Dean could say to that. Chuck_ had _gone. He should probably keep that to himself, though._

_“He saved our lives,” Myles added, looking at Puriel with love and devotion in his eyes._

_Great. If Puriel had the whole town brainwashed, it would be hard to reason with the inhabitants._

_Apparently, Puriel didn’t consider Dean worthy of his attention as he ignored him in favor of addressing Cas. “I am sorry, Castiel, but I can’t let you take away my Eden.”_

_With that, he pointed at two men, who immediately stepped forward and knelt down on either side of Puriel. Dean tried to catch Cas’ eyes to find out if he knew what was going on, but Cas was watching the proceedings with a frown on his face, so Dean turned back to watch what was happening as well._

_Without warning, Puriel let his arms shoot out and buried his hands in the ribcages of the two men, who started screaming instantly. He was touching their blindingly bright souls, closing his eyes as he let them power him up._

_After a while, Puriel let go of the men’s souls and they crumpled down to the ground, clearly still in pain. Then he opened his eyes, which glowed dangerously and stepped towards Sam._

_Dean instinctively took a step forward. “Don’t you dare…” But Cas held him back as the humans in the room cocked their guns at Dean, and took a step forward himself to shield him with his own body._

_Once again, Puriel ignored him as he touched two fingers to Sam’s forehead, and Dean had to watch helplessly as Sam hit the floor, unconscious._

_“You son of a bitch, what did you do to him?” Dean yelled as he tried to break free of Cas’ vice-like grip on his arm._

_“No worries, he’s alive and well… physically,” Puriel said and stepped up to him, getting ready to mojo him to sleep, too. Or worse._

_“Puriel…” Cas began, his tone stuck somewhere between a threat and a plea, and Puriel did, in fact pause, his arm halfway outstretched to Dean._

_“He can live or…” Puriel trailed off and threw a meaningful look over his shoulder at his blind followers._

_Cas was looking at Dean, devastation written all over his face at the prospect that there was nothing he could do to help. Trying to reassure his friend, Dean nodded imperceptibly. They would get through this, one way or another._

_Cas turned back to glower at Puriel while Dean steeled himself as the two fingers touched his forehead almost ironically soft, and everything went dark._

 

A whole lifetime worth of memories were fitting like puzzle pieces into what he had already known, had already felt, making him whole again. Making him _him_ again.

Yet the most important thing was… “What the hell, Sam? Why did you let me let Cas go with that psycho?”

He could be pissed at Cas for choosing an _angel_ of all people over them later. He could be pissed at Cas for lots of things later. Right now, Sam was the next best thing to lash out against because Cas was most likely in a heap of trouble and there was no way Dean was letting him down, was letting Puriel hurt him. It didn’t help that they didn’t know where Puriel had taken Cas, though. Somehow he doubted that Puriel was leading him to the portal to Heaven, which was hundreds of miles away.

Sam looked pissed, himself—whether at Dean or at the whole situation was hard to tell. “I thought he wasn’t your dog,” he countered.

Before Dean could say anything to that, Billie interrupted them. “Since you did not hold up your end of the bargain, I am going to reap the souls that should have moved on to Heaven or Hell by now. You have until I am done to catch up to the angel or I will have to take care of him, too.”

“No, wait!” Sam yelled, but Billie was already gone.

Dean started pacing back and forth. “She better’ve meant Puriel with ‘the angel’ and not Cas! ’Cause I’m sure as hell not gonna let her kill Cas! She should remember I killed her former boss…”

“She’s not here right now,” Sam noted. “You can hold off on the threats.”

Dean took a deep breath, trying to get his head on straight. Coming up with a plan of action, he told Sam to track Cas’ phone.

While Sam did just that, Dean decided to warn Cas about Puriel. He didn’t even try his cell phone first. Even if it didn’t go straight to voicemail, a call might tip Puriel off. Instead, he closed his eyes and began to pray.

“Hey Cas. Uhm… Castiel.” Better go with the full name to make sure his prayer got through. “I don’t know how much you remember. Sammy and me… we got our memories back and—Puriel is seriously bad news. He was the one to take our memories away and… I’ll explain everything later, just… you gotta trust me here. I know he is an angel, but he doesn’t care about you. Not the way we do. You said it yourself: We have this bond. I remember…”

“Got him. Let’s go,” Sam interrupted his prayer.

“Don’t trust him. Get away from him if you can. We’re coming for you.—Amen,” Dean quickly ended his prayer, already on his way outside to the Impala.

***

Dean drove as fast as he could through Pine Grove while Sam told him where to go while looking at his own phone and at the blinking red dot they were following.

Billie was apparently keeping busy as there was the occasional body lying on sidewalks and collisions here and there, which meant Dean couldn’t drive as fast as he wanted to. People who were still alive were trying to help, but that only meant more chaos on the streets.

When they reached a huge pileup and there was no way around it, Dean parked the car and they continued on foot.

They turned into an alleyway away from the chaos and that’s when Dean saw them. Puriel was standing with his back to them close to Cas in a sort of embrace, only their arms hung limply by their sides.

The way they were standing close to each other seemed rather strange. Dean almost thought he could see the shadowy shapes of wings entwined. What the hell did Cas need comforting for? But then Dean blinked and the outlines were gone.

Dean was just about to call out to Cas when Puriel laid a hand on Cas’ head. Cas opened his eyes wide in shock, but it was too late. Puriel’s hand started glowing, about to smite Cas, and Dean saw red.


	10. Chapter 10

Dean rammed the angel blade into Puriel’s back, twisting it until his grace burned out and his lifeless vessel fell to the ground. The moment Puriel let go of Cas’ head, Cas slumped down, too, remaining unmoving on the ground next to Puriel’s body.

“Cas!” Dean yelled, falling to his knees next to him and cradling his face between his hands. Desperation was squeezing his heart tight as he shook the angel gently, trying to get him to wake up.

Cas’ eyes snapped open and he gasped for breath. Dean couldn’t suppress a sigh of relief as he wiped a hand over his face and shut his eyes tight. They hadn’t been too late. Cas was alright.

When he looked back at Cas, a relieved smile tugging at his lips, Cas was staring back at him with a frown on his face.

“Who are you?” he asked, and had it been anyone else, Dean would have thought it was supposed to be a joke. As it was, it looked like Puriel hadn’t tried to smite Cas after all, but had instead taken away his memories once more.

“Cas?” Sam asked tentatively, taking a step closer and drawing Cas’ attention to him for the first time.

Cas scrambled away from Dean and then quickly got up as he took in his surroundings. His eyes landed on Dean’s angel blade that he had dropped in his haste to get to Cas, then he looked at Puriel and the wings burned into the ground, and his eyes widened slightly before they narrowed and zeroed in on Dean who had gotten to his feet as well.

In the blink of an eye, Cas had drawn his angel blade. Great— _now_ he wanted to defend himself. Puriel he let angel-hug him, but _them_ , he wanted to fight.

“No, it’s okay,” Sam said, holding out his hands placatingly. “We’re here to help. He… uhm… he was a bad angel.”

That was clearly the wrong thing to say. Cas was sizing them up, probably contemplating whether or not to smite them.

“What did you do to my wings?” he asked accusingly.

“Oh for… We didn’t do _anything_ to your wings,” Dean said, rolling his eyes. “That was all you, pal.”

When Cas’ eyes didn’t lose that guarded look full of suspicion, Dean sighed and tried a different technique.

“Look. I know you can feel…” He glanced over his shoulder at Sam before turning back around to Cas, taking a step closer and continuing in a lower voice. “…this bond between us.”

Cas tilted his head, his eyes narrowed, but he finally lowered the hand holding the angel blade.

“You know? Grace-soul bond?” Still with the frown. “Your grace and my soul want to get it on?” Dean joked. He should have known that the joke would fall flat. Even _his_ Cas wouldn’t have gotten it.

 _This_ Cas, sans memories, narrowed his eyes even further until they were nothing but slits.

“Don’t give me that look, you know what I mean. Point is, if we were the bad guys, would such a bond even exist?”

Cas seemed to consider this, but before he could tell Dean how right he was, how wrong Cas had been and they could all hug it out, Billie’s voice from behind made Dean turn around.

“Good to know that you can do _something_ right,” she said, eying the dead angel before she fixed Dean with her gaze. “The balance has been restored.—Not a lot of thanks to you.”

“Wait,” Dean yelled, since he had a feeling that she was about to pop out on them again. “He’s mind wiped.” He gestured towards Cas. “Could you do your thing?”

Billie looked like she was sucking a lemon. Then again, she did most of the time. “You’re not really asking _me_ to do _him_ any favors?”

“What business do you have with Death?” Cas asked Dean, suspicion returned, but Dean ignored him and addressed Billie instead.

“C’mon,” he cajoled. “You kinda owe him. He got you a promotion.”

Billie’s ‘you’re kidding me’ face told him that she was still holding on to her grudge because Cas had killed her, promotion or not, but he barreled on, “Come to think of it, it was kind of a team effort between me and him, so you owe _both_ of us.”

“What he means is that we would be very grateful if you could help us out,” Sam chimed in diplomatically.

Dean suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and instead nodded his assent.

“You better remember this the next time you’re thinking about cheating death,” Billie warned them before she grudgingly snapped her fingers once more and puffed out, leaving Cas stumbling against the onset of returning memories.

Dean immediately reached out to him in order to support him, and Cas instinctively accepted the help, clinging to Dean with one hand while the other was cradling his head, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Dean could relate, having gone through the same process himself, and he waited patiently until Cas opened his eyes again and blinked a few times.

“Dean?” Cas asked, still holding on to Dean’s arm like a lifeline.

“Got it in one,” Dean said, smiling at Cas because it sure was good to have _his_ Cas looking back at him. Still, there was something bugging him. “I warned you about him. Didn’t you hear me pray?”

“I didn’t listen to your prayer,” Cas admitted. At least he had the decency to look sheepish about it. “I was angry with you,” he added by way of explanation.

“You don’t get to tune me out just ’cause you’re mad at me,” Dean said. “Wait, why were you mad at me?”

Before Cas could answer, Sam cleared his throat, making them turn around to look at him.

“Maybe we should get out of this town before someone notices we killed their God?” he suggested, motioning towards Puriel.

“ _We_?” Cas repeated.

“Look. I’m not gonna apologize for trying to save you,” Dean defended himself.

He had mostly blocked out background noises during all the excitement, but now that he paid attention to it, there were sirens wailing in the distance, some of them getting louder. “Sam’s right. Let’s go home,” he said, pleased to see that Cas knew exactly what he was referring to—and it sure as hell wasn’t Heaven.

***

Back at the bunker they were all pretty much dead on their feet after driving straight through.—At least they had been able to take turns now that Dean knew to trust them with his baby. Still, after the obligatory third degree by their mom, they all went to their separate rooms, looking forward to a good night’s sleep for once.

Only, sleep didn’t want to come for Dean. Cas had been quiet on their way back—and twenty hours of quiet was a long time. Of course, his moose of a brother had been there the whole time, so Dean hadn’t been able to broach the subject of sulking angels.

Finally fed up with lying in bed while his thoughts were going in circles, he flung back the sheet and got up.

When Dean saw that Cas’ room was unoccupied, the bed still made and not slept in, he searched the rest of the bunker and finally found Cas in the kitchen sitting at the dining table, clasping a steaming mug of cocoa with both hands. Dean paused in the doorway, taking in the domesticity of the scene. He couldn’t help but smile to himself. Cas had made himself at home here, alright.

“So that’s what you’re doing when we’re asleep,” he said, taking a step into the kitchen. Cas looked up at him and Dean couldn’t suppress a smirk. “Raiding our supplies.”

He pulled out a chair to join Cas.

“It tends to get lonely here at night,” Cas explained and fell silent again, sipping at his cocoa.

“So,” Dean began after a few seconds had ticked by. “You didn’t listen to my prayer because you were mad at me.”

It was half statement, half question, but Cas didn’t seem to get the question part of it, as he just hummed and continued drinking his cocoa.

Taking a guess at what it was Cas was sulking about, Dean said, “I don’t always immediately think it’s an angel’s fault if things go to hell.”

Okay, not the best way of phrasing that in the presence of an angel, but Dean didn’t let Cas’ furrowed brows deter him. “For what it’s worth, there are a lot of bad humans, too.—If humans had the abilities angels have, they’d probably mess things up a lot worse.”

Cas sighed and put the mug down.

“You were right,” he said, looking anywhere but at Dean. “The last time an angel wanted to become God… things ended much worse.”

“I didn’t say that to make you feel bad,” Dean said, even though he kind of _had_ at the time.

“Regardless, it’s the truth.”

Dean couldn’t argue with that so he chose to stay silent.

“All that I have done… And still you forgave me,” Cas continued.

“Cas…” Dean started because this was dangerous territory, but Cas kept on talking.

“Why do _I_ deserve forgiveness and he doesn’t?”

Dean waited until Cas was looking at him before he started talking. He had to make sure he was getting through to the angel because no way in hell would he let him compare himself to Puriel.

“Well, for one, you always do what you think is for the best. Not for yourself, but for others. Puriel was a bag of dicks who _only_ thought of himself. He didn’t heal those people to _help_ them. He did it so that he had something to hold over his underlings. You saw what he did to them. Using them for their souls to boost his powers? So why did you deserve forgiveness?” Dean repeated Cas’ question. “You aren’t a power hungry dick like him, but an angel with a soul of gold, that’s why.”

So there. That had been a rather long speech by his standards, but he hoped that Cas had gotten his point.

“I don’t have a soul at all.”

Damn his stubborn literal angel. “Grace of gold then, I don’t care.—Heart of gold—you have one of those, right?”

“It is not made of gold and even if it were, I fail to see how that would have earned your forgiveness.”

“Cas, c’mon,” Dean said, aggravated that he had to spell it out. “You know why I forgave you.”

He was shit at putting these kinds of things into words, but when Cas tilted his head at him, he knew he had to say _some_ thing, so he went with a quip. “’Cause we’re soul-grace mates.”

Dean hoped Cas heard the apology for lashing out and saying he wouldn’t want an angel as a soulmate behind the quip.

“Dean…”

“I know—doesn’t exit. Well, someone’s gotta be the first. Seems like it _does_ exist—’cause you ’n me? We’re it.”

Fixing Cas with his gaze, he didn’t let him look away until Cas inclined his head in the face of Dean’s irrefutable logic.

“I’m really mad at you for just taking my memory of that dream away by the way,” he felt he had to mention.

The ‘caught’ look on Cas’ face told Dean that the angel hadn’t even considered that that was a memory Dean had regained as well.

While he waited for Cas’ apology and assurance that he would never do it again and would never have done it in the first place if he had remembered everything, Dean’s eyes landed on Cas’ cup of cocoa on the table. He could use a beer. Too lazy to get up, he reached over for Cas’ cup instead and took a sip.

“You don’t _seem_ mad,” Cas stated, and Dean realized that he really wasn’t.

“Yeah, well. You were probably going to play the amnesia card anyway. I’m just jumping ahead to after the fight.”

When Cas kept staring at him, Dean added, “What can I say? You’re very forgivable and I’m too tired to hold a grudge right now.”

And then he took the last sip of Cas’ cocoa out of spite. When he put the empty mug back down, he had to suppress a yawn.

“You should go to bed,” Cas said. “You are exhausted.”

“You gettin’ tired of talking to me?” Dean joked, but as so often, Cas didn’t get his joke.

“I feel it is my duty as your grace-soul mate…”

“Soul-grace mate,” Dean corrected.

“…to make sure your human needs are taken care of.”

Dean should have known his whole soul-grace mate argument would backfire on him.

“Talking about human needs,” he said in an attempt to distract from himself as they got up to make their way to their rooms. “What’s with all the sleeping lately? Haven’t seen you sleep that much since you were human.”

“Angels are not meant to use their powers against each other,” Cas explained. “When Puriel took away my memories, my grace must have tried to restore them, and with my grace busy elsewhere… well.—I felt… safe in your company. Safe enough to ‘recharge my batteries,’ as you say.”

Dean was trying to come up with something to say to that when Cas already continued, “But no need to worry. Now that my memories are back, I do not require any more sleep and can concentrate on taking care of you.”

“I don’t need taking care of,” Dean grumbled.

But on the way to their rooms, half-asleep and with their arms occasionally touching while they were walking, it was hard to remember why he didn’t like being the one taken care of for a change.

Whatever their bond was, whatever it entailed—it had been something he had known but never let himself think about too closely for so long, it felt good to have it finally acknowledged.

Dean bumped Cas’ shoulder with his own. _Hey there, soul-grace mate._

When Cas didn’t bump him back, Dean felt his mood dip a little. But then he thought he felt a ghost of a touch around his other shoulder. Under normal circumstances, he would have thought nothing of it and attributed it to his imagination—if not for a wisp of remembered conversation that floated through his mind.

_“How do angels comfort each other?”_

_“They wrap their wings around each other.”_

And Dean realized that Cas _had_ just bumped him back, only the angel way, and as he smiled to himself, he thought he could feel Cas’ grace reach out and his soul reaching right back.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments make my day and help feed my writing muse. ❤️
> 
> [Rebloggable tumblr link](https://noiproksa.tumblr.com/post/185136682294/deancas-fic-unthought-known-finished)
> 
> **People who kudosed this fanfiction also kudosed:  
> **
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> 
> ☆ **[The Chamber of Truths](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18645262)** (3.7k, _On a case, Dean and Cas get stuck in a cursed room and the only chance they have at getting out in time is to play along and tell each other ‘meaningful truths.’)_


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